Data
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Original Data from Ronald B. Mitchell. 2002-2020. International Environmental Agreements Database Project (Version 2020.1). Available at: http://iea.uoregon.edu/
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Data used for visualization
Agreements were ratified in the same year they were signed
349Agreements never got ratified
141Years taken, on average, from signature to ratification
2.2Concept-final
What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements (Authors: Ronald B. Mitchell, Liliana B. Andonova, Mark Axelrod, Jörg Balsiger, Thomas Bernauer, Jessica F. Green, James Hollway, Rakhyun E. Kim, and Jean-Frédéric Mori Source: Global Environmental Politics 20:1, February 2020, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00544)
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Change in number of agreements 1857 - 2016
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Consent to be bound
Regular update needed
Abtract
Initiated in 2002, the International Environmental Agreements Data Base (IEADB) cata- logs the texts, memberships, and design features of over 3,000 multilateral and bilateral environmental agreements. Using IEADB data, we create a comprehensive review of the evolution of international environmental law, including how the number, subjects, and state memberships in IEAs have changed over time. By providing IEA texts, the IEADB helps scholars identify and systematically code IEA design features. We review scholar- ship derived from the IEADB on international environmental governance, including insights into IEA membership, formation, and design as well as the deeper structure of international environmental law. We note the IEADB’s value as a teaching tool to pro- mote undergraduate and graduate teaching and research. The IEADB’s structure and con- tent opens up both broad research realms and specific research questions, and facilitates the ability of scholars to use the IEADB to answer those questions of greatest interest to them.
Source: What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements Authors: Ronald B. Mitchell, Liliana B. Andonova, Mark Axelrod, Jörg Balsiger, Thomas Bernauer, Jessica F. Green, James Hollway, Rakhyun E. Kim, and Jean-Frédéric Mori Source: Global Environmental Politics 20:1, February 2020, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00544)
Concept-draft
What We Know (and Could Know) About International Environmental Agreements (Authors: Ronald B. Mitchell, Liliana B. Andonova, Mark Axelrod, Jörg Balsiger, Thomas Bernauer, Jessica F. Green, James Hollway, Rakhyun E. Kim, and Jean-Frédéric Mori Source: Global Environmental Politics 20:1, February 2020, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00544)
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Change in number of agreements 1857 - 2016
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Change in number: Option 2
The first plot simply depicts the general change in number of agreement over time. It does not tell us more detail about what are the main environmental areas that states cooperate.
Change in number: Option 3
This plot reveals that species and pollution are the two main environemtal areas that countries have been cooperating on in the last two centuries, wit pollution gaining more attention recently. However, general audience might not be able to read the timeline effectively without any guidance what happens between 1950 - 2000 that produced so many agreements. Plus, two points are not satisfying in terms of aesthetic: 1) the legend on the right takes space while there’s plenty space in within the plot, and 2) the color is not attractive. All of these limitation is fixed to give the final plot in the left.
Visualization-final
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Top 15 lineages collectively account for about one-third of the total Multilateral Evironmental Agreements
A lineages is defined as a set “of agreements, protocols, and amendments that modify, extend, replace, or explicitly derive from one or more original agreements (Mitchell 2003, 432).” Source: Mitchell, Ronald B. 2003. International Environmental Agreements: A Survey of Their Fea- tures, Formation, and Effects. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 28: 429–461.
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Change in type of agreements over time
Agreements have become increasingly diverse in the subjects address overtime (New agreements are highlighted in red)
Visualization-draft
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Change in type of agreements over time: Option 2
> This plot gives us a general sense about types of agreement. But the truncated shapes make it somewhat ugly.
Change in type of agreements over time: Option 3
Heatmap doesn’t seem to be ideal to present so many points in the x axis (year in this case). If I use coord_fixed(), it becomes way too small to read.
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Agreements have become increasingly diverse in the subjects address overtime: final
New subjects are highlighted in red
Agreements have become increasingly diverse in the subjects address overtime: draft
There are several problems with this plot: 1) The numbers do not play out nicely because some categories has to few count. 2) The intention was to show how subject of agreements diversify over time, however there are not so many changes from after 1945. This suggests that we can just collapse the last three into one.